A drone flew from the ocean from St. Petersburg to Hurricane Idalia. Here’s what he saw.

A day before Hurricane Idalia reached Florida’s Big Bend, a bright orange drone in the ocean rendezvoused with the main hurricane in the turbulent Gulf of Mexico.

The unmanned research vehicle, called the “Glider,” was sailboat-shaped and 23 feet long, a long way from its home in St. Petersburg. Nearly 200 nautical miles from the eye of Idalia on August 29, as the angry sea churned and tossed, the vehicle began recording video.

The drone footage, released this week by federal meteorologists and data company Saildrone, Inc. Based in California, a dramatic look at an environment rarely seen by the human eye: Towering waves nearly 23 feet high rolled violently as Idalia winds gusted to nearly 100 mph. The stunning views and data captured from the storm could help improve hurricane forecasting in the future.

“While forecasting the path of hurricanes has steadily improved in recent years, predicting the rapid intensification of hurricanes remains a major challenge,” said Cristina Castillo, the company’s senior program manager. Rapid intensification occurs when a hurricane’s wind speed jumps by at least 35 mph within a 24-hour period.

Hurricane Idalia rapidly intensified from 75 mph to 130 mph before landfall as it moved toward the Big Bend, and there is a growing body of research that shows rapid intensification is occurring more often with climate change.

Federal oceanographers have plenty of tools to study hurricanes, from buoys and moored planes to buoys and underwater buoys. But until recently, an important piece of the puzzle was missing. What happens at the surface where the wind meets the water? Saildrone is now working directly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to answer this question.

“The key here is that we can point these gliders at the strongest parts of hurricanes and get measurements that nothing else can do,” said Greg Foltz, a oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and science lead for the agency’s hurricane team.

The government agency began working with Saildrone in 2015 on a mission to the Bering Sea, western Alaska, to study the decline of sea ice. In 2021, during the company’s first year tracking hurricanes, an ocean drone captured video footage for the first time inside a Category 4 hurricane.

Now, federal oceanographers are using 12 drone gliders during the 2023 hurricane season. The vehicles are strategically placed in areas where hurricanes have historically crossed most often, Foltz said.

There are seven drones off the coast of the U.S. Virgin Islands, two off Charleston, South Carolina, and one roaming the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of St. Petersburg. Two gliders are on standby and ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, according to company spokesman Gene Verscus.

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In mid-June, in anticipation of a busy hurricane season, the company launched a rover from its ocean mapping headquarters and operations center in St. Petersburg’s Innovation District adjacent to Bayborough Harbor. Using satellite communications to steer the drone at a top speed of 9 mph, the glider could take up to two months to reach its destination, Fultz said.

When the camera began panning into Hurricane Idalia, the drone was about 125 nautical miles southwest of St. Petersburg.

“Idalia was interesting. It formed quickly and we didn’t have a lot of time to prepare,” Fultz said. “Fortunately, we had a glider that was already in a really good position in the eastern Gulf, and it was kind of sitting there, so we just had to Move it and adjust its position.

After collecting footage from Hurricane Idalia, the research team has switched gears in recent days and is currently placing three drones at Hurricane Lee in the North Atlantic.

“For the last week or so, there’s been pretty much nonstop activity,” Fultz said.